A review of the book, “Gods of the City”, by Robert Orsi.
This essay provides a discussion of the book, “Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape”, a collection of essays that centers on religions of the world assimilated within the American society. The analysis centers on the theme of religion and the urban landscape in contemporary American society. The paper focuses on four different sections of the book, discussing how physical and social spaces influence an individual and society?s development of meaning of the social realities in the context of religion.
“The first chapter of the book is comprised of essays that discuss the theme of formation of self-identity of the individual in the society through religion. This self-identity is shaped from meanings constructed by the individual, as s/he understands a social experience generated from a religious activity. Orsi provides an interesting case study of this phenomenon in the essay, “Migration as the Loss of Home,” where social assimilation is synonymous with physical assimilation, or an individual’s adaptation to a new environment.”